Third Party System

The Third Party System was a period of American history from 1854 to 1894, during which American politics was polarized between the classical liberal Republican Party and the conservative Democratic Party. The System succeeded the Second Party System, whose demise was caused by the emergence of the slavery debate in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Anti-slavery forces united behind the Republican Party, while the states' rights cause united behind the Democratic Party. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 saw the Republican-led northern Union under President Abraham Lincoln defeat the Democratic-led southern Confederacy, reunite the country, abolish slavery, and implement Reconstruction, during which the Republicans supported African-American civil rights in the American South. Reconstruction's end in 1877 led to the suppression of black civil rights by the Southern Democrats, and the 1880s and 1890s saw the national focus shift towards economics and American nationalism. By 1894, the Republican Party was firmly in control of the north, while the Democrats were mostly confined to the American South. In 1896, the Fourth Party System was ushered in as the Democrat William Jennings Bryan' spearheaded the rise of social liberalism in the Democratic Party, realigning American politics as the Democrats grew increasingly liberal and the Republicans grew increasingly conservative.

The major parties of the era were:
 * Conservative dot.png The Democrats were a conservative political party founded in 1828 by Andrew Jackson. While the populist Jacksonian movement dominated the Democratic Party until 1848, the end of the Mexican-American War led to a realignment in party politics. During the slavery debate, the Democrats were split between the Southern Democrats (and allied "Doughfaces" in the North) who supported the extension of slavery and moderate Northern Democrats who supported compromises and states' rights while opposing the idea of secession. During the American Civil War, the Northern Democrats were divided between the liberal and pro-Union "War Democrats" and the conservative and pro-Confederate "Copperheads". After the war's end, the Democrats were kept out of power by the ascendant Republican Party from 1868 to 1932, only holding power from 1884-1888, 1892-1896, and 1912-1920. During the 1880s, the Democrats were divided between the pro-business, pro-reform, and anti-corruption conservative Bourbon Democrats and a liberal-populist wing which went on to form the pro-silver and agrarian Populist Party. In 1896, populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan was chose as the party's presidential candidate, heralding the rise of social liberalism in the Democratic Party and the start of the conservative wing's decline outside of the South. During the Third Party System, the Democrats were supported by white southerners, unskilled laborers, old-stock farmers in remote parts of New England and the Ohio River valley, and Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland, relying on machine politics in cities such as New York City to cultivate Catholic immigrants' support for the party. Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans looked to the Democrats for protection against the Republican Party's moralistic views, including the Republicans' support for Prohibition, and the Democrats also represented the lower tiers of the country's economic class structures. German-American Protestants, once a major bloc within the Republican Party, shifted toward the Democratic Party after 1890 in response to the Republicans' support for English-only education, and the German vote was decisive in the Democrats' 1892 gains.
 * Reactionary dot.png The Southern Democrats were a highly-influential reactionary, white supremacist, and pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party which emerged in the aftermath of the 1833 Nullification Crisis. While President Andrew Jackson was a moderate supporter of states' rights, his threat of force against supporters of nullification in South Carolina set the Southern Democrats apart from the main party. The Southern Democrats were squarely focused on states' rights and the expansion of slave power, emphasizing the Jeffersonian ideals of popular sovereignty and limited government. The Southern Democrats agitated for secession once the Republican Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, believing that the only way to protect states' rights, their slavery-based agricultural economy, and their regional interests was to secede and form a new country, the "Confederate States of America". After the bloodshed of the American Civil War of 1861-1865, the Southern Democrats were kept out of power during Reconstruction as newly-enfranchised African-Americans overwhelmingly voted Republican. Upon the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern Democrats returned to power with the help of the Ku Klux Klan, who intimidated black voters and their white allies and allowed for Southern Democrats to return to power. Once in power, the Southern Democrats passed several laws disenfranchising African-Americans, culminating in the 1896 "separate but equal" decision after Plessy v. Ferguson and in the disappearance of the Republican Party from southern politics until the 1960s. The Southern Democrats were a coalition of conservative businessmen and commercial planters, populist white subsistence farmers, and Catholic immigrants, uniting several ideological factions through racial and regional unity.
 * Liberal dot.png The Republicans were a classical liberal political party founded in 1854 as an alliance of anti-Kansas-Nebraska Act forces, including members of the abolitionist Free Soil Party, anti-extentionist Conscience Whigs, northern members of the nativist Know Nothings, and anti-slavery Democrats. During the American Civil War, the Republicans were divided into the liberal Radical Republicans (led by Thaddeus Stevens, they strongly advocated for the abolition of slavery across the United States), the moderate Republicans (led by Abraham Lincoln, who were focused on the preservation of the Union, with or without slavery), and conservative Republicans (who supported the gradual, recompensated abolition of slavery and opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment). After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party was divided between liberal Radical Republicans (who vehemently supported African-American civil rights and harsh punishment for the former Confederate states) and Ulysses S. Grant's conservative "Stalwarts" (who supported a cautious approach to Reconstruction, the reintegration of the Confederate states, and machine politics). The end of Reconstruction in 1877 left the party divided between the pro-machine "Stalwarts" under Roscoe Conkling and the pro-meritocracy "Half-Breeds" under James A. Garfield, and the Half-Breeds ultimately succeeded in passing civil service reforms in 1883. The Republiccan Party also adopted Whig-style modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, internal improvements, aid to land grand colleges, and immigration restrictions (including the Chinese Exclusion Act). The Republicans were supported by Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans, and other evangelical Protestants who supported pietistic moralism such as the temperance movement, women's suffrage, and civil rights, inheriting the Whig Party's support for moral rectitude. The Republicans, also like the Whigs, promoted modernization and industrialization, earning the ire of the agrarian Populists, who were inspired by old Jeffersonian ideals.
 * Liberal dot.png The Populist Party was a left-wing populist, progressive, nativist, anti-modernization, and agrarian political party which emerged in 1892 as a rural backlash to industrialization, the power of corporate interests, and the Democrats and Republicans' support for economic liberalism. The Populists united rural Democrats and the pro-flat money Greenback Party, opposing the dominant conservative wings of both the Democrats and Republicans and supporting collective bargaining, federal regulation of railroad rates, an expansionary monetary policy, bimetallism, a graduated income tax, the direct election of US Senators, a shorter workweek, and the establishment of a postal savings system. The Populists sought to curb corporate and financial interests and empower small farmers and laborers, and they were popular in the American West. They carried four states in 1892, when Populist James B. Weaver ran for President, but they failed to attract the support of urban laborers. In 1896, the Populists backed Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, who won much of the American South and West, but was defeated by the conservative Republican William McKinley. The party then suffered a nationwide collapse, and it finally dissolved in 1909. Many of its former members joined the Democrats, Republicans, the Socialist Party of America, and the Bull Moose Party, and the Populists helped to influence the Democratic Party's leftward shift.